02/01/2017

Watership Down and Out

Do you remember Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and Blackberry? Maybe you didn’t have to read “Watership Down” in school, maybe you’ve never seen the animated movie. Well, it’s a tale about a group of rabbits in search of a new home.

Fiver was a small young rabbit with the gift of being able to tell when something bad (or good) is going to happen. Fiver’s brother is Hazel, who is a little bigger and kind of looks out for him. These rabbits, along with a lot of other rabbits decide to leave their warren. A “warren” is the network connecting all the rabbit burrows or holes.

You know rabbits, where there is one, there are many. Fiver got this feeling if they left the security of their home, they would be in grave danger. He told the Chief Rabbit this to no avail; the Chief Rabbit just didn’t believe him.

They go on journeys and end up living happily in their warren after a lot of themes, motifs and symbols. In the book, various folks have determined that the author was hitting on home, leadership, nature and how we deal with adapting, trickery and humanity in general.

Back in the late 1970s, they made a movie titled “Watership Down,” based on the book. The movie description in one sentence is, “A group of rabbits flee their doomed warren and face many dangers to find and protect their new home.”

That’s where my dogs, Doolittle and Maddie, come in. I’m pretty sure since I’ve switched over to free antenna television, I left the TV on while I was at work and they saw the movie. They must have wanted to get in on the danger and trickery and helping rabbits move from their warren.

First, let me just go ahead and say that I wouldn’t want to hurt any animal just for the sake of hurting the animal. But a dog is a dog, and my poodles are dogs. Doolittle weighs in at between 90 and 100 pounds and Maddie at about 12 or 13 pounds.

It was almost dark and I heard her screaming. She was yelling at old Doo to “Put it down!” She was also yelling at me to get out in the yard. It was a terrible thing – the screaming and yelling part.

For years, my dogs have chased rabbits, never being able to catch one. On this day, they seemed to have cornered those rabbits in their warren and had some sort of wild adventure in the bushes. Again, they are dogs and I made a deal with them in the past year that I would not get mad at them again because they are way on up there in the dog to people age conversion.

Doolittle had his fill and my wife got both dogs back inside. Then Doolittle commenced to throwing up everywhere, causing more screaming and panic. It was like your drunk fraternity brother going out on the town and waiting to get home to lose his dinner and everything else all over the new sofa you had just scavenged from the side of the road for your dorm room. After launching all of these terrible things on the rug in the den, he simply went to his man cave and fell asleep. Doo’s man cave is under the kitchen table on top of the vent. He looked exhausted, but very satisfied with his work.

After I cleaned up the rug, I was instructed to go out in the yard and clean up all of the remains of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and Blackberry. I used the “It’s too dark” excuse; mainly because I couldn’t stomach cleaning up after my fraternity brother anymore on this evening.

The next morning I did find the remains. It was heartbreaking, but understandable. It looked almost like Doolittle was some sort of hunter preparing to take his trophies back to his man cave.That would have been some terrible screaming and yelling.

They are dogs. And that Fiver rabbit should have known they were coming if he is so good at predicting the future. Then again, the Chief Rabbit wouldn’t have listened to him. From my morning experience, I’m pretty sure they are going to have to elect a new Chief Rabbit and another one to tell them when something bad is going to happen.

CMT Column from the week of January 30, 2017, All Rights Reserved and Stuff like that...